The Times Would Have Been Crazy Not to Publish That Op-Ed

According to legendary Watergate sleuth Bob Woodward, the publication of an anonymous op-ed by a “senior official in the Trump administration” was an error in judgment. Had the decision to publish the op-ed come to him, Woodward told CBS News, he “wouldn’t have used it.”

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Nor is Woodward alone. Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik agrees with Woodward. Without the author’s identity being made public, Zurawik notes, the “op-ed massively adds to the cesspool of confusion about the most important story in American life right now.” And Nate Silver, editor of FiveThirtyEight, tweeted that though “it’s a complicated case” his “view is that this [op-ed] was too hot/complicated/important for an op-ed and should have been turned over to the newsroom to handle.”

It all adds up to a growing consensus among journalists and critics that the Times made a mistake in publishing this anonymously. This consensus is simply wrong.

To have insisted that the publication carry the author’s name, or to have rejected the piece entirely rather than grant anonymity, would have deprived the American people of directly communicated information from inside the White House. We need to remember: This is a firsthand report, spoken directly to the American citizenry, by somebody in a position of responsibility. It was largely unmediated—opinion editor James Dao has said the op-ed arrived in good shape, suggesting it wasn’t heavily edited—and anonymity guaranteed not only its publication, but its candor.

It was unlike anything we’ve seen so far, but not because of the information delivered. A profusion of news articles and television reports have described President Donald Trump’s behavior behind closed doors. Had this author simply handed their information to a Times newsroom reporter—as Silver would have it—this piece would have had little news value. In that sense, the critics are right that it doesn’t reveal much we didn’t already know.

Yet this essay is both qualitatively and descriptively different from anything we’ve seen yet in the Trump era, and that’s because its power, vitality and relevance emerge from its direct address. Focusing on the motives of the author, or the essay’s news value, is a mistake. In other words, it’s the medium, not the message. And to understand why this might be the most significant and consequential op-ed ever published, we need to think about why the page was invented and what purpose it was designed to serve.

The op-ed page, and the op-ed essay, were originally conceived by John B. Oakes, the editorial page editor of the New York Times. As early as 1956, Oakes wanted to start a new feature. The idea was simple: The Times would publish outside voices, in short, readable, and persuasive essays, on the page opposite its editorial page. It wasn’t entirely innovative—the old New York World ran an “Op. Ed.” page in the 1920s. But that page, supervised by legendary Editor Herbert Bayard Swope, was filled with regular house columnists like Heywood Broun, Alexander Woollcott and Franklin P. Adams. Oakes’ version would primarily publish outside contributions, and it would be designed to diversify—and even challenge—the institutional opinions presented under the Times’ own aegis.

Amazingly, it would take almost 15 years for this innovation to come to fruition. Delayed by infighting, managerial incompetence and other factors having little to do with journalism, the first iteration of the Times’ op-ed page wouldn’t be published until 1970. By then Oakes’ original idea had been transformed. Within the newspaper, a working group convened in the late 1960s eventually settled on the formula that we recognize today: The page would feature provocative artwork, as selected by Lou Silverstein, the newspaper’s art director. It would host columns by both regular columnists and reporters (which had already begun appearing under the title “Topics of the Times”). It would have essays by outside contributors, offering information and insights unavailable elsewhere in the newspaper. And, because it would replace the lucrative obituary page, a quarter of the page would be reserved for a premium advertisement.

When it premiered, nobody really knew the precise definition of an op-ed essay. Assistant Editor Herbert Mitgang was tasked with explaining it to putative authors. “These essays run 700 words,” Mitgang explained to the novelist Walker Percy, “and appear opposite the editorial page of the Times. The most successful pieces have been highly individualistic, opinionated, and pungent ... You will not get arrested if the piece is also witty.” But not everyone grasped the format’s essence. Mitgang exchanged ideas with Noam Chomsky, who did not take kindly to the editing process before finally abandoning the effort. “For some reason, I find it enormously more difficult to write 700 words than 7,000—a typical professorial defect, I suppose,” Chomsky wrote apologetically.

From its inception, the op-ed page solicited the majority of its pieces. That’s a little secret that remains true to this day—the Times rejects the vast majority of submissions. “You just couldn’t get really good pieces and good bylines unless you dreamed them up yourself, so we solicited pieces,” Mitgang recalled. The pieces that came in—from both people asked to contribute and complete outsiders—were then edited and published. From the start, Oakes, editor Harrison Salisbury and Mitgang believed the audience wouldn’t confuse publication with endorsement. One surviving list of solicitation ideas (preserved in Salisbury’s papers at Columbia University) includes the prospects of asking Gus Hall of the Communist Party USA to explain “U.S. Communist priorities these days,” and having Robert Welch answer the question: “The John Birchers are flourishing, yes?” The editors knew the motivations of these contributors would be easily decodable to readers.

To the surprise of everyone save for perhaps Oakes, the page proved an immediate and resounding success. In its first six months, it earned a net profit of $112,000 on $264,900 of revenue. Even more surprising was that this success occurred in the context of a recessionary retrenchment, in which the overall operating income of the Times fell from $10.2 million to $6.8 million. As I’ve detailed elsewhere, the innovative feature’s combination of public service and remarkable profitability inspired newspapers across America to install their own versions.

Today, we take the op-ed page, and the essays that fill it, for granted. It’s our familiarity with the forum that makes each of us an expert on what should—and shouldn’t—be published. Yet there’s no question that the journalists who originally conceived and developed the op-ed page – Oakes, Salisbury and Mitgang—would celebrate its current incarnation. Their innovation was designed specifically to give Times readers an opportunity to adjudge for themselves the value of unmediated communication that’s unique in the newspaper.

Critics argue that by not forcing the author to identify her, or himself, the Times has made that process more difficult. That may be true. But when the Constitution was being debated in the United States, the Federalist papers weren’t shelved because nobody knew who “Publius” was. Rather, readers judged the case on the words, not the identification or motivations of the authors. There’s a long history of anonymity and pseudonymity in American journalism, and it exists for good reasons. That seems to be largely forgotten here.

Finally, we all seem to be forgetting that newspapers exist to print news and information, not hide it from the public. Had this “senior official” come forward and the Times rejected the publication of the essay without identification, it would have committed journalistic malpractice. Think of all the instances when the Times withheld reports that contained vital information for the citizenry. It could have published the news of the Bay of Pigs invasion and possibly canceled that misadventure, and we’ll never know what impact the National Security Agency spying revelations the Times delayed inpublishing would have had on the 2004 election.

We’re all better off with more unmediated perspectives from within the administration. If anonymity is the only way to obtain these, then it’s worth the trade-off. Only after publication can we debate the motivations behind the piece—as we all should.

That’s right: Had the Times not published the anonymous op-ed, we never would have been able to have this debate. That, in itself, vindicated publication—and redeems the vision of John B. Oakes.